Mary began to experience abdominal pain, but ignored it for several months. When she finally told me, I said, “I’m your husband, go see your doctor.” She called the doctor’s office and after 40 minutes working her way through the confusing, circular, and interminable phone tree, she got the next available appointment — seven months in the future. When she finally did get in to see her primary care physician, the diagnosis was inoperable pancreatic cancer. Twenty-two months later, my college sweetheart and wife of 54 years died. Might things have been different if she had been seen two years earlier?
Everyone in the world knows of the Covid-19 pandemic. Few have heard about a health crisis that has killed millions with no fanfare at all: death by queue. My wife was likely a victim.
Death by queue is a phrase coined in the United Kingdom, where “queue” describes a line of people waiting for something. Death by queue refers to dying while waiting in line for care that is technically possible but unavailable when needed. Death by queue has long been a feature of the much-vaunted British National Health Service (NHS), which was the model for President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Recent reports note heart attack victims dying for lack of care-in-time from the NHS and calls for private physicians (those few who remain) to provide timely medical care because NHS (government) physicians cannot.
Americans also experience death by queue. However, since that pandemic is politically unpopular
